So.. I get this brand new Dell. It comes with Norton Antivirus, Internet Security, Systemworks.. blah blah blah. The first day the PC rules. Second day slightly less so, third day it's even slower.

So, I figure it can't be any viruses or anything right? Well, yes and no.

I download and run Ad-Aware.. it finds 347 objects, but every time actually tell ad-aware to start a search, it brings up an error telling me windows is restarting in 60 seconds. That gives the program enough time to finish the scan, but not enough for me to do anything about it.

I re-boot into safe mode. Run adaware again. Works perfectly. Kills all 347 objects. Then I reboot.

Run adaware again in regular windows. Allows the scan this time. Finds 28 more objects. Get rid of them. I run it again and it says the system is clean.

I download and run Ad-Aware.. it finds 347 objects, but every time actually tell ad-aware to start a search, it brings up an error telling me windows is restarting in 60 seconds. That gives the program enough time to finish the scan, but not enough for me to do anything about it.

You know what's sad? That 'error' message of WinXP shutting down in 60 seconds was solved at least 6 months ago by a Windows patch.

Which means that Dell hasn't installed a single 'critical vunerability' patch from http://www.windowsupdate.com yet. Needless to say, that's your next stop.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

Actually, I've already been to windowsupdate. It was the first thing I did after I turned the computer on and got on the internet. All of it was installed before I visited a single other webpage. I haven't downloaded anything except the Call of Duty demo.. but all this garbage manages to make its way into my computer anyway.

It's pretty frustrating.

*Also.. I killed Systemworks and left antivirus and internet security on, and it has made a difference in the general windows performance of the machine. Games are a bit quicker too. Thanks for that. It seemed like a silly app anyway.

*Edit again: I discovered that internet security needs to be tweaked a bit and enabled in some ways before it really does much. Seems to have fixed most of my problems. Now the only thing adaware brings up is cookies.. which is odd because I have them disabled. I would think IE would be refusing all of them wouldn't it?

*Edit again: I discovered that internet security needs to be tweaked a bit and enabled in some ways before it really does much. Seems to have fixed most of my problems. Now the only thing adaware brings up is cookies.. which is odd because I have them disabled. I would think IE would be refusing all of them wouldn't it?

In my mind, Internet Explorer IS spyware in itself. On a fresh PC, after visiting windowsupdate.com, I go visit http://mozilla.org and download the latest and greatest Firefox browser. IE (at least before the Service Pack 2 upgrade) is SO filled with holes, pop-ups, security errors, you name it, that you're risking your general sanity by just using it.

Thankfully Service Pack 2 fixes a great many of those issues, but it's only available to the Corporate users as of right now. Those of you who have the Home or Professional editions will have to wait just a bit longer.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

Thankfully Service Pack 2 fixes a great many of those issues, but it's only available to the Corporate users as of right now. Those of you who have the Home or Professional editions will have to wait just a bit longer.

Btw, this is the reason why I build my own rigs. There's nothing quite like booting up xp for the first time after installing oem version and seeing NOTHING in 'Teletubby land' but your recycle bin....

Thankfully Service Pack 2 fixes a great many of those issues, but it's only available to the Corporate users as of right now. Those of you who have the Home or Professional editions will have to wait just a bit longer.

Sorry bud, SP2 works for both Home and Pro (corp or non). You can get it from FilePlanet as well.

Firefox is nice, but it's not the answer. It's open enough for people to build decent extensions, but since Mozilla doesn't even follow the w3 HTML / CSS requirements, it starts out as flawed.

If you're going to recommend FireFox, you should also list all of the extensions you use so they can have the same experience you have. Frankly the Tab browsing in Slimbrowser (IE6 shell) is way better than the 'outta the box' Firefox. I'd prefer them fixing IE to switching over to a new browser.

As it stands I'm using both Firefox and IE6 / w SP2 and can balance out what I need. It's workable, but not ideal.

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

Ron, if you haven't done so allready, unistall almost everything that comes pre-installed on the machine. Dell adds in crap even when you tell them not to, and a lot of it runs an .exe or two at startup.

On top of Adaware and Spybot, get Hijackthis.exe. Sorry no link but a simple google search will get it for you. Hijackthis will give you a nice pretty log of everything running on your machine, and and any odd files, reg keys etc. that it finds and thinks could be a problem. It's up to you to decide however.

The key to keeping that machine running fresh and new, is disabling the backup logging program that's native to Xp and running in new Dell systems. You can disable that in System Properties off of " My Computer". That alone will free up some memory.

There's a ton of other stuff to disable using good old msconfig in the run function, but I'm not the best at typing it out and explaining it. Just check out the Hardware Help Forum over at GoneGold, all you need is detailed there.

Good luck, and enjoy that new PC smell.

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"I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind amazing things will happen." - Conan O'Brien

but since Mozilla doesn't even follow the w3 HTML / CSS requirements, it starts out as flawed.

You can't be serious. Two years ago when I was still in the W3 support "loop" Mozilla was owning IE as far as standards compliancy goes. Not only did it implement more standard features than IE, itimplemented most of them correctly)

I find it hard to believe that anything NEW from Mozilla is less compliant than older Mozilla technology (let alone IE).

EDIT: P.S. Not saying it isn't possible, but I do find it rather hard to swallow.

Quote

As it stands I'm using both Firefox and IE6 / w SP2 and can balance out what I need. It's workable, but not ideal.

You have to use IE sometimes. Too many sites use IE's proprietary "extensions", and/or "legacy"(read: bad) "code".

The key to keeping that machine running fresh and new, is disabling the backup logging program that's native to Xp and running in new Dell systems. You can disable that in System Properties off of " My Computer". That alone will free up some memory.

You mean System Restore? That's one feature I'll never turn off, as it's saved my ass before in a 'last resort' situation. It's one of the featured 'features' of WinXP that actually works.

If you mean something else, I can't figure out what it is offhand.

And as far as Firefox goes - there are only a few sites (our backend database being one of them as Ron pointed out) in which it doesn't work. That and the occasional text/graphic allignment glitch. Other than that, it works perfectly.

But after watching somebody's PC get torn up in less than 15 seconds from all the native vunerabilities in IE (only saved by a healthy application of SpyBot, Adaware, and WinXP's System Restore), I've never looked at IE as a viable browser again.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

There has yet to be a database driven cms that validates strict xhtml. I met someone at sxsw interactive earlier this year who is trying to make one, but there are many factors that are hindering this.

Firefox/ mozilla is in fact the most standards compliant browser there is. Safari is getting there. Supposedly, we may see a more standards compliant IE sooner rather than later, but I'm not holding my breath....

My friend's father ordered a new Del about a year ago, and when he set it up and installed it, all of the bookmarks in IE were for gay porn sites. There was so much spyware on it and pop-up scripts that he sent it back to Dell and demanded a new computer. I just don't understand how they can ship out 'new' computers with either such a nasty image on a new drive, or with an obviously used drive.

As for browsers, I love Firefox, and use it exclusively, unless I'm at microsoft.com.

I find it hard to believe that anything NEW from Mozilla is less compliant than older Mozilla technology (let alone IE).

Sadly it is true. We use strict xml on our site and some parts of it (pieces of our database back end) just break when you use Mozilla.

Uhhh...

They do??? The only thing I can think of that wouldn't work in both browsers would be the javascript we use for our wysiwyg which only works in IE because it's based on the MSHTML Editing Platform - basically, Internet Explorer includes some functionality to make sections of a webpage editable by defining a "contentEditable" attribute or "designMode" property.)

and we don't use strict XML (God - wish i was that good. Someday soon though.)

We use a strict xhtml doctype on some pages where we can get away with it, but a loose xhtml on pages that output stuff from our wysiwyg (the wysiwyg output doesn't validate -- Grrrrrrr)

And for the record - Firefox is a massive improvement over other browsers as far as the w3c standards go. Not sure where anyone would get the idea otherwise.

Personally I highly recommend that if you're running Windows - you need to be running either Firefox 0.9+ or IE 6.0+.

If you're on a mac - switch to Safari and never ever even think about runnin IE for Mac ever again.

Correct, believe it or not - most of our backend was written during a single weekend when the wife was away and I was partially drunk

So even though the presentation is all CSS based, I think it's pretty much just straight HTML.

Quote from: "FoolishStudios"

There has yet to be a database driven cms that validates strict xhtml. I met someone at sxsw interactive earlier this year who is trying to make one, but there are many factors that are hindering this.

Man that would be a fun project to do. I would love to build a new CMS system. I can't tell you the number of times that I've thought about throwing the one I built here away and building something from scratch.

Quote from: "FoolishStudios"

Firefox/ mozilla is in fact the most standards compliant browser there is. Safari is getting there. Supposedly, we may see a more standards compliant IE sooner rather than later, but I'm not holding my breath....

Hmmm - that is odd. I haven't encountered any issues with cascading in Mozilla. Course that's not to say I haven't run up against a bug or two in each of the browsers myself, so it's certainly possible.

But as I re-read your comment - what do you mean by "the browsers text size?" Are you saying that you wanted to create a css rule that would override the users preferences that they set in the browser?

They do??? The only thing I can think of that wouldn't work in both browsers would be the javascript we use for our wysiwyg which only works in IE because it's based on the MSHTML Editing Platform - basically, Internet Explorer includes some functionality to make sections of a webpage editable by defining a "contentEditable" attribute or "designMode" property.

And for the record - Firefox is a massive improvement over other browsers as far as the w3c standards go. Not sure where anyone would get the idea otherwise.

Personally I highly recommend that if you're running Windows - you need to be running either Firefox 0.9+ or IE 6.0+.

But as I re-read your comment - what do you mean by "the browsers text size?" Are you saying that you wanted to create a css rule that would override the users preferences that they set in the browser?

First let me clarify something : it's not a bug or non-compliance; it's a browser behaviour which is open to either YES or NO to a cascade weight being allowed higher than the size option in a browser.

Imaging Console Gold was using a font rather than a graphic, and the graphics size (background) had requirements. CSS can force text to be non-changable (with the important tag) as it *does* behave this way in IE6x. At the time that I was doing this, (~15mo ago) Mozilla gave more weight to the browser over any CSS instruction to force size. IE didn't; and per the requirements I had at the time I needed it to do so.

That being said; the variations of UNIX/LINUX aren't half bad either. You gotta hand one thing to microsoft though; they've applied the history of political evolution to computers. In a world of greed and mistrust, the only way to get everyone to play together is to be the benevolent dictator.

[EDIT: and make a buttload of money in the process ]

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

i dislike windows xp. it runs my games, and it is generlly ok, but i have a few problems with it. first, it is so open to spware its unbeleivable. the os is like a metaphor for an open door. it gets all kind of viruses , its ridiculous. also, there is not an easy way to save files. there are multiple directories holding the same thing for each user on the computer, that soaks up so much space. i have 1 gb of music, but because it is replicated twice more, i end up using 3 to save music that should only take up 1. its sucha a hassle to have to go in and clean that crap out fso i have space on the hard drive again.

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if you strike me down, i will become more powerful than you can ever imagine.

i dislike windows xp. it runs my games, and it is generlly ok, but i have a few problems with it. first, it is so open to spware its unbeleivable. the os is like a metaphor for an open door. it gets all kind of viruses , its ridiculous. also, there is not an easy way to save files. there are multiple directories holding the same thing for each user on the computer, that soaks up so much space. i have 1 gb of music, but because it is replicated twice more, i end up using 3 to save music that should only take up 1. its sucha a hassle to have to go in and clean that crap out fso i have space on the hard drive again.

The security issues are not just xp, but all windows os'. It's just focused on xp because that's the latest and greatest. Try out a Mac (and, btw, you can ditch the urinal puck and go with any two button sroll mouse- osx supports it. I hate those one button mice...)

I have no idea what you are talking about regarding the saving of files tho. just don't use the 'music' folder. make up your own. sure, there are seperate settings for each user, with seperate desktops, etc. that's the same on just about any os, it's sop.

i have a mac laptop (using a three button mouse) and i love it. true about the security issues, i guess i should have said windows instead of xp. that just amkes me hate gates and M$.ive tried to create my own folder, but still i have one on my documents then windows makes another "documents and settings/user...." one which is the same thing. its also bad at running. mine crashes and freezes constantly. xp does not run efficiently on my machine. having said that a 1 ghz is alittle behind the times, but still it should be able to handle one os, right? even though, it performs very slowly and because of all the freaking spyware that is running in the backround, it freezes.

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if you strike me down, i will become more powerful than you can ever imagine.

Well, no sense in my adding anything. You guys have seemed to work everything out.

It looks like the consensus is that Mozilla Firefox is indeed king of compliance. Glad to hear there hasn't been a regression. I still work with CSS and Javascript and all that on occasion, but I haven't really followed the W3 or the browser war for a while.

A nice little plugin, but I'll stick with Adblock and Mouse Gestures (both available on the main Extension link inside your browser). I haven't visited any pages that are non-IE only which need to be spoofed by something like this.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

A nice little plugin, but I'll stick with Adblock and Mouse Gestures (both available on the main Extension link inside your browser). I haven't visited any pages that are non-IE only which need to be spoofed by something like this.

i dislike windows xp. it runs my games, and it is generlly ok, but i have a few problems with it. first, it is so open to spware its unbeleivable. the os is like a metaphor for an open door. it gets all kind of viruses , its ridiculous. also, there is not an easy way to save files. there are multiple directories holding the same thing for each user on the computer, that soaks up so much space. i have 1 gb of music, but because it is replicated twice more, i end up using 3 to save music that should only take up 1. its sucha a hassle to have to go in and clean that crap out fso i have space on the hard drive again.

There are two sets of preferences, policies and registry keys for every user; a common set (system) and a user (your id). In the folder structure you have two as well: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\

( %username% is a variable, replace it with your profile name )

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Your folders are applied in two different fashions__________________________________________________________1) Cascade - (Start Menu, Desktop, Favorites, etc) some folders cascade and so there doesn't seem to be any difference to the user. If you put 3 links into All Users\Favorites, and 3 into username\favorites, you will see 6 favorites, and all other users will see the 3 in the all users folder. You'll never see a second start menu. If you want to see the difference in your start menu, right click and Explore, and then right-click on it again and Explore all users.

So you have your own Music in My Music, and The All Users\My Documents\Music folder can be accessed FROM your profile by going to Shared Music (link on the left while in your OWN music folder).

This Shared Music folder is in essence the All Users\Music folder\ and so ALL users have it. If you want to share your stuff, this lets you do it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your system preferences (located in the registry) are also individual:

In the registry they're represented as:HKEY_Local_Machine (HKLM) and HKEY_Current_User (HKCU)HKLM is stored with the other "common" hives in SYSTEM.DAT HKCU is stored in the user profile folder in USER.DATThe registry (just like security policies) will cascade. This means that the system is applied first, and then the user settings is overlayed.

Since you can make your login private (from the user management section), it means you can keep YOUR stuff private and still share files with other users on the same PC.

It's not a bad thing. Windows XP isn't just an OS; it's a NOS (network operating system). It's ultimately designed for multiple users.

As for the open door; it's that they're the biggest target. If I were to write a virus I'd want the biggest audience; IE and Windows have a (modest) >85% market penetration. Yeah; I'm not gunning for MAC.

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

I use the Developers' Toolbar, too, and it is AWESOME if you are trying to put together a web page. I also use Super Drag and Go, which allows me to just drag-flick a URL, and have it open in a new tab. It doesn't work with linked images, which is a pain, but there aren't too too many of those. The only other ones I use are Mouse Gestures, and Single Window, which traps links that would otherwise open in a new window and puts them on a new tab.

Whoops! I forgot Stumble Upon, which is GREAT for when you're bored. Just click the 'Stumble' button and go to a random website. It's also really good for sharing with friends websites that you visit and enjoy.